The Latest Research, Commentary, And News From Health Affairs
Thursday, October 14, 2021
Dear John,
Two articles in the October 2021 issue discuss the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19, Perinatal Mental Health & Racial Disparities
Sara Kornfield, Lauren White, and colleagues studied mental health and resilience among women who
were pregnant during the early lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their analysis suggests that “prenatal depression stands out as an important risk factor that predicts postpartum depression and uniquely contributes to impaired mother-infant bonding.”
“The stresses of an uncertain future and social isolation specific to COVID-19 have intensified the experiences of the postpartum period,” they emphasize.
Also in the October
issue, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field and colleagues, using death certificate data,
characterize the association of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage with pre-2020 mortality, COVID-19 mortality, and 2020 excess mortality in the state of Minnesota. "White people, on average, had higher prepandemic mortality than BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] in similar neighborhoods,” they explain. However, “COVID-19 mortality and excess mortality were substantially higher for Metro-area BIPOC than for Metro-area White people living in similarly disadvantaged
neighborhoods,” reflecting a notable increase in racial disparity.
Today on Health Affairs Blog, three new posts focus on Medicare Alternative Payment Models.
Michael Zhu and coauthors discuss how the Medicare Shared Savings Program and other value-based payment programs have helped health care organizationsbe resilient during
COVID-19.
Jason Buxbaum and coauthors argue that taxpayers and beneficiaries will be best served by continuing alternative payment models expected to save money over the long run, even if we cannot be sure these expectations will be borne out.
Travis Broome and coauthors contend that the Medicare Shared Savings Program provides the most useful common infrastructure, or “chassis,”
on which to test new innovations with only a fraction of the effort it takes to build a new model from the ground up.
Elevating Voices: Hispanic Heritage Month: In their January 2020 blog post, Shantanu Agrawal and Adaeze Enekwechi discuss implicit bias within health care delivery. “Behind the data are the personal experiences and examples of bias and discrimination, which abound in care settings if we only look or ask,” they write.
Check out our COVID-19 Resource Center for Health Affairs content about all things related to the pandemic.
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